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Series: “The last Predator generation with GTX 9xx GPU was a great hit and this was the laptop which proved that Acer can build one of the best gaming notebooks on the market” (quoted from page LaptopMedia). Last year (2016), the release of the Predator 15 aiming to gaming segment is the clearest evidence of Acer for the statement above. With the performance improved, yet the price reduced, the Acer Predator 15 is built in the strong 15-inch chassis with the high-end Intel Core i7 processor and Pascal-technology Nvidia GeForce graphics card. This one could be one of the most favorite laptops specialized for gaming despite some minor flaws, perhaps.

Design

Talking about the design, page TechRadar said that the Acer Predator 15 boasted an entirely inconvenient design: “It’s awkward and clumsy to lug around, what with its ventilation system protruding from the rear”. With the same point of view, the reviewer from page NotebookCheck also showed his opinion that the update had not really changed the very aggressive design with its red visual elements and the red illumination. Also from this page, only the fan exhaust at the rear differs a bit from old model, but we will have to see both devices to notice the differences really. However, according to page PCWorld, “The 15-inch model, whose sleek, rubberized plastic shell looks cool and does a fantastic job of repelling fingerprints. It’s huge: 15 inches wide and 12 inches deep, and just a smidge over 8 pounds, not including its sizable power brick”. Similarly, page DigitalTrends left their positive comment that the Predator 15 was an aesthetic we had seen a thousand times, and there were some elements that were starting to show their age. Specifically, as remarked on page ComputerShopper, “The formidable, edgy exterior is predominantly black, with red accents. The spiky silver Predator logo is positioned in the center of the lid, and repeated under the display. The logo on the back of the lit in red, as are the two stripes flanking either side” whereas “Except for the side, the laptop looks pretty much the same as its predecessor and that’s not bad at all - both of them have awesome looking and functional design” (LaptopMedia).

Display

Featuring a 15-inch 1080p screen and about 141 pixels per inch, as a review on page DigitalTrends, the Predator’s IPS panel delivers rich, lifelike colors, with a vibrant contrast ratio capable of competing with much bigger and much more expensive than desktop displays. In the similar perspective, “Contrary to its larger sibling Acer Predator 17, the Predator 15 is only available with a Full HD IPS panel. 1920 x 1080 pixels results in a pixel density of a 141 PPI on the 15.6 inch screen, which is a decent compromise between sharpness and size”, stated NotebookCheck. In addition, the new Predator 15, as a remark of page PCMag, adds support for Nvidia’s G-Sync technology, which coordinates the frame rates of the display with those of the game we are playing to reduce screen tearing and give us a smoother gaming experience. Positively, the ComputerShopper showed their mind for this display: “We have zilch to complain about in terms of the display’s picture quality. The colors are vibrant, with excellent contrast. There’s plenty of brightness for most any situation, even limited outdoor use, and the display’s matte surface does a good job of keeping reflections at bay”. Also, for LaptopMedia, Acer Predator 15 has an extremely good screen and that is something normal having in mind that they’re testing a high-end machine. It has excellent brightness, contrast and viewing angles. The resolution is Full HD and they consider it as optimal for a 17-inch screen.

Trackpad and Keyboard

Evaluated from page PCWorld, the Predator 15 has room to spare a full-size keyboard with several gaming-centric features such as LED strip around the trackpad, red keys for WASD and directional arrows, and of course, customizable backlighting. Moreover, the island-style keys are very easy to type with, and that’s coming from a mechanical keyboard fan. The input devices did not differ from the predecessors, so NotebookCheck summarized the most important aspects: “The illuminated chiclet keyboard is one of the better inputs on the market, and convinces with a comfortable typing experience thanks to the convenience key travel”. Nevertheless, TechRadar showed a complaint that the membrane keyboard and trackpad both feel rather decent to the touch, but they’re nothing special. Anyway, “This is a great keyboard, it’s a joy to use, and it even features a full-sized numpad. It won’t put a mechanical desktop keyboard to shame, but it feels snappy and responsive” (DigitalTrends). Besides, the mouse replacement of the Acer Predator 15, as an evaluation of NotebookCheck, is a classic touchpad with dedicated mouse buttons: The surface provides gliding capacities and the size is sufficient; only very small cursor movements are not always perfectly executed; multi-touch gestures on the other hand are no problem for the pad. Regarding to DigitalTrends, the Predator 15’s trackpad is decent: “It has rubberized coating that can feel a little weird, and it’s not as smooth as it could be. The trackpad is accompanied by two hardware buttons which feel a little flimsy, like you could pry them up without much trouble”.

Performance

Acer offers different configurations of the Predator 15 as a comment on NotebookCheck: All SKUS are equipped with the quad-core processor Intel Core i7-6700HQ. Users can choose between two different GPUs (GeForce GTX 1060 or GTX 1070) and the memory capacity. “If you use GTX 1060 and if you’re expecting to play every new game that releases at 1080p 60 fps with the highest settings tickle, you’ll be saddened to know that this laptop just won’t cut it”, said TechRadar. Experimenting with the version of GTX 1060 GPU and 6 GB of DDR5 RAM, the reviewer of PCWorld supposed: “A laptop this thick could accommodate GeForce GTX 1070, but one nice side effect of the under-sized GPU is noise. Under heavy graphics loads, the Predator 15’s fans are relatively quiet, and the keyboard is relatively cool”. Following a remark on page DigitalTrends, taking on its own, the i7-6700HQ is a solid-processor, it delivers excellent performance without any hiccups or noticeable slowdown during everyday tasks, and it performs admirably in most games. As a result of the performance test by PCMag, the Predator 15 also returned strong results on the Heaven and Valley gaming tests: At 1366-by-768 resolution with graphics quality set to medium, it averaged 196 frames per second (fps) on Heaven and 103 fps on Valley. At 1920-by-1080 resolution, and with the graphics quality increased to Ultra, it averaged 68 fps and 73 fps, respectively, on the same tests. Also, with the GTX 1070, LaptopMedia also showed their good records for this notebook: 203 fps on Full HD and max setting on CS:GO, 52 fps on Full HD max setting on GTA V, 52 fps on Full HD max setting on Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016).

Emissions

About emission, LaptopMedia left a positive review that even at the hottest point at idle, the heat of the Predator 15 was pretty cool and that was normal when we weren’t playing games: “Its record is 36.3 Celsius degrees. When we put the notebook to 100% CPU + 100% GPU load, we measured 44.3 Celsius degrees at the hottest point which is a great result”. In the same perspective with LaptopMedia, TechRadar stated that due to its being huge and all, there were plenty of rooms for vents, and Acer took every opportunity to ensure that its system wouldn’t overheat. If we are champing at the bit for a gaming laptop that stays cool in terms of the temperature rather than fashion, this will be our choice (advice from TechRadar). For NotebookCheck, “The fans will reach between 40-45 dB(A) while gaming, which is typical for this class. The murmur is audible, but we could not determine any annoying frequencies. Overall, we would still recommend headphones while gaming”. As a remark of the ComputerShopper, the temperatures on the outside of the notebook were impressively low: “The Predator 15’s chassis thickness is most certainly a help when it comes to cooling”.

Battery

According to TechRadar, as with most gaming laptops, the Acer Predator 15 struggles when it comes to extensive use without the power brick connected. The PCWorld showed their experience on the battery that the Predator 15 lasted for four hours and one minute: “We could say that’s average for a high-power gaming machine and leave it at that, but there’s more to this result”. Also, like a comment on page DigitalTrends, we can push battery life to about three and a half, or maybe four hours if we’re just browsing or working, but the reviewer’s video loop test placed the Predator 15 at four hours and five minutes.

Verdict

In general, “The Predator 15’s primary downside next to competitors is its weight and thickness, a far cry from machines like the slim Gigabyte P35X v6. However, we doubt the Predator 15 would have such an excellent cooling system or speakers if it were ultra slim” (quoted from the ComputerShopper). Anyway, in my opinion, I found the Acer Predator 15 with such a lot of advantages, such as: the good gaming performance, great RGB keyboard, operation in rather cool and quiet condition, and a variety of graphics options for users (you could choose the GeForce GTX 1060 or either a little higher with the GTX 1070). Notwithstanding, the minus point for this notebook is it is pretty thicker and heavier than its predecessor. Anyway, TechRadar gave their conclusion: “Ultimately, the Acer Predator 15 falls short of success, if only because it is far too ambitious to carry its own weight”.

Press Review by Capuchino Saber

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (Laptop): Pascal based high-end mobile graphics card based on a cut down GP104 (like the GTX 1080) and GDDR5 graphics memory. Successor to the GTX 980M with a 10 Watts higher TDP. Similar to the desktop GTX 1070 performance wise, but with more shaders and lower clock speeds.
These graphics cards are able to play the latest and most demanding games in high resolutions and full detail settings with enabled Anti-Aliasing.
» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List.Intel Core i7: The Intel Core i7 for laptops is based on the LG1156 Core i5/i7 CPU for desktops. The base clock speed of the CPUs is relatively low, but because of a huge Turbo mode, the cores can dynamically overclock to up to 3.2 GHz (920XM). Therefore, the CPU can be as fast as high clocked dual-core CPUs (using single threaded applications) but still offer the advantage of 4 cores. Because of the large TDP of 45 W / 55 W, the CPU is only intended for large laptops. 7700HQ: Quad-core notebook processor based on the Kaby Lake architecture. Besides four CPU cores (including Hyper Threading), the chips also integrates the HD Graphics 630 GPU and is manufactured in an improved 14 nm process.» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Processsors.15.6":

15-16 inch is a standard display size for laptops and offers the biggest variety of products.

» To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.3.6 kg:

This weight is representative for typical laptops with a 14-16 inch display-diagonal.

Acer: The company was founded under the name of Multitech in Taiwan in 1976 and renamed to Acer or Acer Group in 1987. The product range includes, for example, laptops, tablets, smartphones, desktops, monitors and televisions. Gateway Inc. and Packard Bell also belong to the Group and sell their own laptops.

While Acer still had the third largest global market share in the notebook segment in 2008, it ranked 6th in 2016 with a market share of 6% after they had continuously lost market shares.

There are dozens of Acer laptop reviews per month, the ratings are average (as of 2016). Gateway, which has an own laptop line-up, has also belonged to the Acer Group since 2007.